All three articles in my dissertation gather information from individuals, analyze it, and aggregate that information into forecasts of upcoming events. The motivation is to make forecasts more efficient (accurate and timely), more versatile (provide the most useful information for each...

This dissertation charts intellectual changes in the way work is valued--both politically and socially--from the 1930s to the present day. It employs both historical and interepretivist methodologies in order to examine the instantiation of a public vision of work during the work relief programs...

Australia struggles to achieve economic competitiveness, prevent expansion of the trade deficit and develop value-added production despite applications of policy strategies from protectionism to trade liberalisation. This article argues that these problems were emerging at the turn of the...

One of the key strategies of the current Commonwealth government in Australia is to promote a dynamic entrepreneurial culture by improving the business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper evaluates the contribution of SMEs to innovation and employment in...

The Jobs Model of presidential election forecasting predicted well in 2004. The model, based on data available in August 2004, generated an error of only 1.3 percentage points when forecasting the incumbent share of the two-party popular vote (Lewis-Beck and Tien 2004). In contrast, the median...

The statistical modelers are back. The presidential election forecasting errors of 2000 did not repeat themselves in 2004. On the contrary, the forecasts, from at least seven different teams, were generally quite accurate (Campbell 2004; Lewis-Beck 2005). Encouragingly, their prowess is receiving...

This thesis aims to accomplish four goals. First, to establish the extent to which a gender wage gap exists in the American workforce and why it matters. Second, it seeks to explore the various factors that scholars have advanced as potential explanations for this gap with the aim of identifying...

Many products consumed on college campuses such as coffee and chocolate come from developing countries where producers are often paid insufficiently and exploited. Fair Trade certification of products guarantees producers a fair price and other social benefits. The objective of my CE/T project...

This dissertation develops theoretical and econometric models of investment and labor demand in South Africa in order to shed light on the decline in the rate of fixed investment beginning in the mid 1970s, the nature of business compliance with racebased labor market policies, and the emergence...

The authors investigate the relationship between system structure and the initiation of militarized disputes among Great Powers. The central hypotheses concern the interaction between system uncertainty and the risk propensity of national decision makers. The authors employ a research design...